Liking What I See

       My highlights are "caramel" colored apparently. And I think I like them. 

       I'm not wild about them, mind you. I mean the difference is not extreme in any way, and even good friends have failed to notice them.  But I guess they add a little something to my look. For whatever reason, they help me feel better about me, and that's nothing to sneeze at.

       I also have been using so-called "age defying" make-up by Revlon. My former foundation had a matte finish, and although it went on smoothly, it felt dry and mask-like by the end of a day.  My new discovery -- "Age Defying Spa" foundation  -- looks lovely when first applied and even better as the day progresses.  I actually look dewy by evening, but without looking shiny or greasy.  

       I never would have believed such things were possible if they were claims in an advertisement. In fact, I bought the make-up in the expectation it would give me something to mock. But I guess these companies do occasionally know what they're doing.

       Do I look younger now? 

       I don't know.  Over the weekend, while buying beer at a hockey game, the person at the counter said she should ask for for identification because I look younger than 45 (the cut-off age for demanding ID, apparently). But, she continued, she would not demand it, because I clearly am older than 21.  

       Hmmmmm....

       Only five years ago, I was aggressively followed by an employee of a liquor store, who appeared incredulous when I had ID showing that I was not only more than 21, but actually over 4o. I'm not sure that sort of thing will be happening again.

       And maybe that's okay. 

       And even if it isn't, there isn't much I can do about it anyway. I'm not one to even consider face-lifts or botox or anything like that. Indeed, I privately mock the strange-looking women with tight faces, pulled up eyes and swollen lips.  I am prepared to age gracefully.

       But maybe that's the thing I learned this month -- that it can be done gracefully, with only a bit of effort.

       Now, instead of looking in the mirror and cringing, I am looking in the mirror and liking what I see. Sometimes I even smile at myself. 

       And that definitely makes the effort worthwhile.

Going Blond?

       I am writing this at the salon right now, as my hair color is processing. 

       I recently read a book about not looking your age, which suggested that most older women should color their hair a lighter shade. The book, rather annoyingly, is called "Staging Your Comeback: A Complete Beauty Revival for Women Over 45".  Since the book arrived from amazon.com the day I turned 46, it seemed appropriate.

       Anyway, the author told a story about a client who asked about coloring her salt-and-pepper hair only after attending a class reunion and realizing that she was the only woman there who wasn’t blond. The author confirmed that she too should have blond hair. 

       Personally, I found it a stupid story. As my mama used to say (or as she would have said if she was the kind of mama who said that sort of thing), “If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you do it too?”

       I think it’s silly to suggest that virtually all women should go blond – or that all women should look alike. 

       So I am coloring my hair its usual color – dark brown. It suits me. I am a dark hair kind of gal. And for the two weeks or so that my roots don’t start peeking out, I am pretty sure it will look good.

       Anyway…that’s what I wrote before I spoke to my colorist/stylist.

       Just as she was getting ready to rinse the color solution out of my hair, I told her what the author of the book had said about going lighter. 

       "Well…” she said slowly, “there is some truth to that. A lot of women should start going lighter as they age. Their skin gets lighter [is that true???], and a lighter hair color suits them better – although not necessarily all the way to blond."

       "Should I do that?” I asked her. 

       “Well, you are still so young-looking compared to your age, so it's not necessarily the right time,” she said. “I would tell you if I thought you were doing your hair the wrong color. But,” she continued, choosing her words carefully, “you could start with some lighter highlights around your face, maybe…uh…if you wanted…”

       “What?” I replied. “I thought you said I looked okay and still young-looking.” 

       She grinned, clearly excited the topic had come up.

       So, in the interests of this blog, and as part of my commitment to you, dear readers, I am giving it a try.

       I am sitting at the salon still -- now with foils all over my head -- wondering what will develop. (But that isn't me in the photo. I mean, really...)

       Meanwhile, the stylist still can’t stop grinning.

       To be continued…

Bifocals (sort of)!

        I think one cause of my recent self-image issues (other than the fact that I am aging) pertains to the wearing of glasses.         

        I have needed some vision correction since around the age of 20.  For some reason, many of my law school classmates seemed to start needed help around the same time -- too much reading, possibly?  By the end of law school, it was clear I needed glasses. But I couldn't stand glasses for some reason. I just didn't feel like myself behind them. Maybe I had already spent too much of my life without them, and simply couldn't get used to the change? 

       In any case, I switched to contact lenses almost immediately...and adapted to them so well that I brought along anyone I could to the change -- patiently helping friends and loved ones (including Tom) learn to put contact lenses in their own eyes, helping them if they had problems and telling them to stick with it, until they too were converts.

       But about 3 years ago, I started to have my own problems.  My eyes were red a lot, and people often asked me if I was tired -- which annoyed the hell out of me.  I used eye drops, but things didn't get a lot better. Several months later, I noticed my vision seemed a bit off somehow. I wasn't able to focus on books for as long as I normally liked to. I went to the optometrist and was told everything was okay. And then I went to a second optometrist, who said the same thing...

       And then one Friday I started to have floaters in one of my eyes -- little black spots that moved around my vision, and occasionally made me think I was seeing birds fly from one place to another. I also had a few bright flashes of light.  Nothing more happened over the weekend, but while walking Olympia Monday morning, and watching the floaters flit around my eye, I suddenly knew something was seriously wrong. 

        I hurried home with Olympia and looked up my symptoms on mayoclinic.com.  Within minutes, I had diagnosed a torn retina, and knew I would need emergency eye surgery.  Tom was out of town, as was my closest friend and my closest neighbor.  I would have to deal with this myself. I quickly did more internet research to find one of the top ophthalmologists in town, but before I called, I carefully showered, dressed and packed a large purse for a possible hospital stay. I called a few more neighbors to try to find someone to look after Oly, but had no success. Then, I called the doctor's office, was told to come in immediately, and filling Oly's water bowls, went out alone to meet my fate...

        Anyway, it turns out that the surgery was an in-office laser procedure. Still, it was extremely urgent and serious, and fairly painful. The doctor zapped my eye more than a hundred times -- repeatedly ordering me to stop flinching -- and then said it was fixed. Then, about four months later -- while I was visiting my parents in California -- the same thing happened to the other eye. And I had to find a new doctor who fixed me up again. 

        All that is to say that I have had a rather rough time with my eyes lately. And when it came time to start wearing lenses again, I was nervous.  Although the doctor said there was no reason I couldn't wear lenses full-time, they felt uncomfortable to me. They seemed to scratch my eyes. It seemed I couldn't see that well with them. I went back to the doctor and he told me there was no reason not to use contacts and to just wear them!

        Still, I wasn't able to do it. I had become like those fearful, complaining people who I had earlier helped transition into contacts. And I wore my glasses, even though I hated how I looked in them. I even bought several inexpensive pairs so I could change my glasses look, like I change my clothing. 

        For a few months, I convinced myself that I looked a least a little bit chic, but then I decided I really hated them. And when I started to feel bad about myself, the glasses seemed to make me feel even worse.

        And on top of that, I was constantly lifting the glasses on and off -- wearing them to see things in the distance, but taking them off when I wanted to read up close. I ended up keeping glasses perched on top of my head, so I could have them handy. Sometimes, I would find that I had two pairs of glasses on top of my head.

        So last week, I decided I had had enough. I went back to the eye doctor again, and told him that I simply must have lenses again. 

        And this time, he gave me multi-focal lenses -- essentially bifocal contacts! Talk about feeling old!

        And the doctor, not one for great bedside manner, told me to see if I could stand them, and to come back in a week. I could tell by his tone that he thought I would come back whining again.  

        Once home, I looked them up on the internet and read that some people do have trouble coping with multi-focal lenses. I told a few friends about them, all of whom seemed to have heard horror stories about dizziness and headaches and so on.  

        But it is a week later, and I think they're working for me.  I can see very well in the far and middle distance. I am having a little trouble seeing up close, but wanted to keep on trying, so I am using them for another week.

       Yes, my eyes do feel scratchy and get red. But at least I feel like myself. And I am determined to make these lenses work.

        Like those people I gently guided into wearing lenses, I am patiently doing the same with myself -- a few hours a day, with lots of eye drops and even more positive attitude. 

        I will overcome!

Taking Time - Part 2 (Because I'm Worth It)

       I am now trying to change my attitude about the value of time spent on my appearance....and I'm getting a few extra laughs out of my day as a result.

       It's easy to talk about changing attitudes, but not so easy to actually do it.  I mean, attitudes are often present for legitimate reasons. But sometimes physical changes can help change attitudes. Some say, for example, that simply the act of standing up straight with head held high can help one feel more positive.

       So I am trying the opposite when it comes to hair drying. I am forcing myself to sit down and relax while fiddling with my hair. Since I don't have a chair for my vanity table, I am simply sitting on the carpet in front of our mirrored closet door. And I am doing my best to make hair-drying into a sort of decadent -- even goofy -- break in my  day.

       When I find myself feeling impatient with my efforts, I have been reminding myself of the words from the classic L'Oreal campaign -- "Because I'm Worth It". 

       Although I'm not actually saying the words out loud, I am unable to think of them without a note of sarcasm. Affirmations of my value are not really my thing, especially when those affirmations are written by a Madison Avenue advertising firm. And I can't help remembering the goofy "Daily Affirmations" skits on Saturday Night Live, which (now Senator) Al Franken always ended by lisping "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me!"  

       Still, the words are helping me to slow down -- reminding me of my commitment to spend time on myself.  

       And they do make me grin.

       Now I have to start worrying about extra smile lines around my mouth and eyes.

Taking Time - Part I

       Our new home has a built-in dressing table in the master bathroom.  I still haven't used it -- in part because I haven't found a chair or stool that's right for the space, but also because it just seems old-fashioned. Some friends who have taken the grand tour of our home have actually laughed at the dressing table. One or two didn't even know what it was for.

       I mean, who sits down to do their grooming these days? Everyone I know just kind of leans toward the mirror to quickly slap on foundation or mascara or whatever. Some women do their make-up while riding the train or bus, and some even do it while driving. We're all too busy to devote much time or attention to the way we look.

       I figure that might be part of my problem.

       Take my hair, for instance.  My hair is naturally curly, but the style has been tending toward straight hair for the last several years. Despite half-hearted efforts to make my hair suit this trend, I never accomplish my goal.  

       The stylist who cuts my hair tells me that she knows what I am doing wrong. I just dry it until it seems dry, she says. And frankly, that seems perfectly appropriate to me.  But the stylist says that when I think my hair is dry, it really isn't.  She says I should consider that just the starting point -- before I spend still more time pulling a big round brush through my hair, holding the hair dryer just so, switching the dryer to cool air occasionally, and working, working, working until my locks are smooth and shiny. And then, because my hair is fine -- like baby hair -- I should lightly backcomb in just the right places, so that my hair isn't too flat while it lies smooth and straight.

       Yeah, sure...

       The fact is that I resent having to dry my hair, and recently have been convincing myself that my hair can surely be washed less often -- so that I can avoid wasting my time drying it. I wish I was like Tom, who can run a brush though his hair -- in five seconds or less -- and look just fine.  But I have tried it, and Tom and I both agreed that I ended up looking like a drowned rat.

      Even trips to the salon seem silly and wasteful to me.  I have recently canceled repeated hair appointments, figuring that I can easily go another month without going to the salon.

       And even when I do make it into the salon, I feel impatient.  I have things to do!  When I do go in, I bring items with me so I can do useful things while the stylist is fussing over my strands. I bring my laptop, or a pen and paper so I can make lists of tasks, or reading material I have been wanting to get to.

       Maybe that is the wrong attitude. Maybe I deserve a little bit of relaxed time -- a little bit of attention -- just for me...

Gardening

       I am inside the house now, after spending two hours doing yardwork. 

       Since the end of August, when we moved to our new home and its nearly one acre of property, I have not paid much attention to the yard. The previous owner’s gardening service has shown up twice – once to mow the lawn and once to do some much-needed weeding – and I have paid them when asked. Things seemed to be going smoothly enough, and I continued to focus on completing our interior improvements. 

       But when we got back from our two-week vacation, I found that the property looked a bit unkempt. Bad storms while we were gone (and another one that hit only hours after we got back to town) meant that the trees had lost the bulk of their leaves, which now could be found scattered instead on the lawn, the back patio and the front drive. 

       I wasn’t exactly bothered by this. As someone who grew up on scarcely-treed prairies, and had lived in high-rises since then, I found the piles of leaves to be novel and enchanting. But part of me knew I was supposed to do something about them. And, to be honest, I was less than enchanted by all the leaves that also found their way onto our carpets and my kitchen floor – brought in by Oly or Tom or just the breeze though an open door.

       So I decided today to do something about it. 

       As we don't yet own a rake, I decided to start with the back patio, and went outside with a kitchen broom and a white kitchen garbage bag. After only a few sweeps at the clumped and damp leaves on the patio, however, I could see that both would be useless.

       I switched instead to a giant push-broom left behind by the previous owner, and pulled out a huge green garbage bag. After five minutes more, I went back inside for some leather work gloves I had bought when we moved – just because I thought the idea of having my own work gloves was cool.

      And I swept and gathered and piled and filled up the bag. And I dragged it out to the street, since today is trash day. And then I swept and pushed and piled and filled another big green garbage bag, and dragged that out to the street too. 

       And I still wasn’t done. The leaves seemed rather resistant to the broom at the edge of the patio – where stone met grass – and I had to bend down and remove these leaves from the muck by hand.  I decided that come the spring, I would put in some edging material so that the grass would appropriately end where the patio began. And as I removed more and more leaves, I discovered that there already was metal edging in place, which had simply become buried under the leaves and grass.  

       I also used my hands to remove leaves piled around weeds that had pushed their way into the cracks between the patio stones. During the last weeks of summer, I hadn’t been bothered by these weeds, liking the thought of greenery taking over where it could. But today, I yanked at them, suddenly eager to get them out of the way. And as the patio grew neater, I decided that next year, I would use some weed spray in select areas.

       And it felt good to be outdoors, and to be working with my hands and arms and back, and to be bringing order back to our patio. I decided that I would buy a rake later today so that I could start on the lawn.  And next spring, I would surely get other appropriate gardening supplies so that I'd be better prepared for whatever awaited me.

       And as I filled my fourth bag with leaves and debris, I found myself thinking that maybe I, too, am like a garden. I too need raking and pruning and weeding and trimming. I too need the right supplies and the proper type of attention at the proper times. Perhaps, just like I had ignored our garden, I had been letting myself go for too long as well. 

       So for my parents, who called after reading my blog entry, worried that I sounded blue, I can honestly say that I am not feeling bad about myself. 

       I simply am feeling that it’s time to tend my own garden and see to it that things keep on blooming in years to come.

Mirror, Mirror

       I have been going through a rough time recently. I look into the mirror, and I don't like what I see.

       Maybe it’s because I am turning 46 later this week. But it seems to be more authentic than that.

       No matter how much sleep I get, I have dark circles under my eyes. While looking at them, I can also see that I have fine lines around my eyes. It seems to me that my skin is looking dull and that my hair is flatter than usual. 

       On our recent travels, I was feeling so bad about my appearance that I sometimes moaned on looking in the mirror, and I had to review each photo Tom took of me on our digital camera to see if I should delete it immediately, before it became part of the “official record” of our trip.

       It may have been in part because it was raining lightly during much of our vacation – which left my hair droopy or frizzy or both. Also, my eyeliner (my most essential piece of make-up) disappeared from our hotel bathroom during our first day in Tunisia.

       I have to say that I didn’t mind that much that the eyeliner was taken. Although the President/Dictator of Tunisia (“elected” to his fifth five-year term, without opposition, only a few days after we left the country) is somewhat of an advocate of women’s liberation and is opposed to women wearing headscarves, the fact is that perhaps half of the Tunisian women we saw were wearing them and were also covered at least in dull-colored, high-necked and long-sleeved clothing. Tom and I figured that if one of these women, concealing much of herself, wanted some good quality eyeliner to make her eyes more attractive, surely she could have it. At the same time though, I did miss doing my own eyes.

       I wasn’t shy about telling Tom about how bad I was feeling. And I must say that he totally rose to the occasion. If I said I was feeling unattractive, he would reply that I looked beautiful. Out of the blue, he would tell me that I was a “hot chick” or a “supermodel” – neither of which I believe, but it doesn’t hurt to hear it over and over again all the same.

       Still, I continued to feel bad – and still do, now that we are home. 

       And I think now that perhaps it is time to pay a bit more attention to how I look – or how I feel about how I look. 

       I haven’t done much to date to address the fact that I am indeed growing older. I don’t use eye cream or any “anti-wrinkle” products. I don’t use moisturizer at night, and during the day, wear the same moisturizer that I started using 20 years ago. I really do not look after my hair well enough. I have been doing home coloring since we moved, and continue to spend more money on Olympia's grooming that I do on my own.  

       And other than my too-brief foray into channeling Audrey Hepburn, I have not been paying much attention to my personal style. 

       I don’t think I can stand it any longer. 

       Although it may sound like a shallow resolution, I feel I really should start taking better care of my looks. 

       I hope that by the end of this month, I’ll start feeling better about myself...